Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Lonely Heiress

“What’s the story?” Mason asked. “Let’s get down to brass tacks.”

“It was an extraordinary story. She stated that Mrs. Marlow had taken up the matter of the will with her on the day that it was executed, that she had told her that her patient, who was really wealthy, desired to make a will in her favor and that he had dictated to her the terms of the will; that his right hand was paralyzed so that he could not sign with his right hand, but that he would sign with his left hand.”

“At that time the will was already drawn?”

“The will was already drawn in the handwriting of Mrs. Marlow. She said that my brother had dictated the terms of the will. She also told Rose Keeling that if Rose would sign as a witness and the will stood up, Rose Keeling would receive a substantial amount of money. Rose Keeling had no way of knowing what Mrs. Marlow promised the other witness, Ethel Furlong, but it is assumed that substantially the same promises were made.

“The three nurses entered the room where my brother was lying. Mrs. Marlow said to him, ‘Now, Mr. Endicott, I have drawn up the will the way you wanted it. You sign here.’ My brother said, ‘I can’t sign with my right hand,’ and Mrs. Marlow had said, ‘All right. Go ahead and sign with your left hand.’

“Thereupon my brother suggested that she read the will to him in the presence of the witnesses, and she said, ‘No, no, that isn’t necessary. These two nurses are on duty here on the floor and they may be called out at any time. They can’t take enough time from their other patients to sit around and listen to this. It’s drawn up just the way you wanted it drawn up. You sign here.’

“My brother George seemed a little bit uncertain about whether he would sign or not without having it read to him. But at just that moment the floor superintendent looked into the room and said, ‘What’s the matter in here? The call lights are on all over the floor.’ Mrs. Marlow had thereupon hastily hidden the will and Rose Keeling had said, ‘I’ll take care of the lights.’ She had dashed out of the room and found three lights. Two of them were patients who required only minor attention and one from a patient who took longer, about five minutes. When she had finished with those duties, Rose Keeling returned to the room, and Mrs. Marlow was then holding in her hands the document supposed to have been signed by my brother, and she said, ‘It’s all right, Rose, he’s signed the will and everything’s all right. Just go ahead and sign here as a witness. You want her to, don’t you, Mr. Endicott?’

“And,” Ralph Endicott went on triumphantly, “my brother, George, said nothing. He was lying there with his eyes closed and was breathing regularly. Rose Keeling thinks that he was either asleep or that while she was out of the room, he had been given a heavy hypodermic of morphine. However, Mrs. Marlow was popular and Rose Keeling was thoroughly in sympathy with having her get something for the nursing and attention she had given my brother. So she signed as a witness.

“Later on, after my brother had died, Mrs. Marlow came to Rose Keeling and told her there were certain formalities that the lawyers would ask about, and told Rose substantially what to say. She told Rose that there had been an outright gift of certain jewelry and that she was going to keep some of this jewelry, but was going to sell some of it to raise some immediate money.

“She did this, selling some diamonds, which I understand brought in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars. My brother’s collection of jewelry, many of the pieces heirlooms, was worth at least a hundred thousand dollars. The story that I now get is that some two weeks before his death, in the presence of Ethel Furlong, he had given the jewelry to Mrs. Marlow and told her that he wanted her to have that jewelry, that he had no use for it; that there would be no descendants of his to wear the jewelry and that she was to take it and do what she wanted to with it. Mrs. Marlow had some cash. She gave Rose Keeling a thousand dollars in cash and told her that when the estate was finally distributed, if everything went all right, Rose Keeling would get another nine thousand dollars.”

Mason said, “Quite easy to make up a fairy story like this, now that Rose Keeling is out of the way. I thought you’d probably do something like that, which was the reason I told you I would only give you five minutes. However, you’ve collaborated on a pretty good scenario. It’s as fast a job as I’ve ever seen. You should be in Hollywood.”

Niles said hastily, “That’s the story they told me as soon as you left the room, Mason.”

Mason merely smiled.

“However,” Niles went on somewhat testily, “there’s proof of this.”

“Proof?” Mason asked.

“Exactly,” Ralph Endicott said. “Rose Keeling’s conscience began to bother her. I received a telephone call from her, stating that she wanted to see me at once upon a matter of the greatest importance. That call came in about seven-thirty this morning. I finished my breakfast and went to her apartment. I arrived there approximately at eight o’clock. I found Rose Heeling in an extremely nervous state. She said she had agreed to do something which preyed on her conscience and that she just simply couldn’t go through with it. She told me that she had received one thousand dollars from Mrs. Marlow, that she was satisfied that one thousand dollars came from the sale of jewelry which had virtually been stolen from the estate; that, inasmuch as I was one of the heirs and represented the others, she had decided to surrender that money and ease her conscience. Whereupon, she handed me her check for one thousand dollars, drawn on the Central Security Bank, and gave me a carbon copy of a letter she had sent to Marilyn Marlow.”

Mason’s eyes narrowed. “A carbon copy?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“How had the letter been written? On a typewriter?”

“No. In pen and ink, but she had a clear carbon copy.”

“May I see the carbon copy of the letter?” Mason asked.

Ralph Endicott said to Niles, “How about it, Niles? Shall we show him the carbon copy of the letter?”

“I see no reason for not showing it to him,” Niles said. “Since you’ve gone this far and told him this much, I’d tell him the whole thing. Put all the cards on the table.”

Endicott opened a billfold which he had taken from his pocket while Niles was speaking, and handed Mason a sheet of note paper. “There it is,” he said.

Mason glanced through the letter. It was a carbon copy of the letter which Marilyn Marlow had received and which she probably had by this time destroyed.

“Very interesting,” Mason said, his voice and face expressionless as he handed back the carbon copy. “When did all this take place?”

“At approximately eight o’clock this morning.”

“That was at Rose Keeling’s flat?”

“Yes.”

“How long were you there?”

“Perhaps half an hour in all.”

“What did you do when you left there?”

“I see no reason to go into that. It involves purely private affairs. I assume you are only interested in Rose Keeling’s...”

“Go ahead and tell him,” Niles grunted. “You’ve admitted having seen Rose Keeling, and if she’s been killed, you’d better go on with your story.”

“It’s a lot of purely personal trivia,” Endicott protested.

“Go on with it, Ralph,” Mrs. Parsons ordered, “otherwise you seem evasive. Tell Mr. Mason where you went.”

Ralph Endicott frowned, said, “Very well. It is a lot of utter trivia. I left Miss Keeling’s place at approximately eight-forty in the morning. I went from there to the office of an automobile agency where I have had a new car on order for some time. I felt certain that they were cheating on me and letting cars out the back door. I had been twenty-fourth on the list several months ago and was advised that I was fifteenth on the list as of this date. I made something of a scene. I left there at approximately nine o’clock. I had an appointment with my dentist at nine-fifteen. I was with him until nine-fifty-five. I remember the time because I had been thinking about that check while I was in the dentist’s chair. I knew it was an important piece of evidence. If I cashed it, then it would be returned to Rose Keeling by the bank when it sent her her canceled checks. If I held it as evidence, she might change her mind and stop payment on it.